


Four for Joy

by Janet Carter (janet_carter)



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janet_carter/pseuds/Janet%20Carter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had entered stage left, by a door that should have been closed; saved his life three times; and exited on her way to a wedding (if it was, indeed, a comedy.) There was also the fourth time, but they didn't talk about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four for Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeaRoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/gifts).



****

**  
_Part 1 (and 2, and 3) Sir Godfrey_  
**

She had entered stage left, by a door that should have been closed; saved his life three times; and left by way of a wedding (if it was, indeed, a comedy.) There was also the fourth time, but tales weren't told in fours – three times if a fairy tale, five acts in a play, and the seventh son of a seventh son might have second sight, but that was the only even number in the story.

Her entrance took his breath away every night, after she first became his Viola. She had the presence for the stage.

Her exits were quieter. She would slip away as quickly as foot could fall when the all clear sounded, chatting with that dear spinster with the dreadful taste, or rushing up and out while the others were still gathering their things. Sometimes he caught her before she was out of sight; other days he didn't notice she had left until well after.

At the end, her exit was worthy of any leading lady.

 **London—7 October 1941**

He had lived many lifetimes in his day; a prince of Denmark, an errant lovelorn lord, even Algernon Moncrieff. And someday he would play the fool - if he had not done so too many times already. Perhaps they would call him from the stage and say that his time at last was up. Little risk of that; he had not lost his grasp thus far and if needed there was always, heaven forfend, regional theatre.

Word came from a friend of a friend who had come to call, ostensibly to distribute leftist pamphlets. Godfrey would have preferred he be honest about his purpose - gossip was a more respectable activity than pamphleting or even socialism, and anyone who couldn't see that had no business doing either one. Winstead had always been short-sighted.

Winstead set down the pamphlets and seemed to be looking around for tea, or something stronger. He opened and closed a side cabinet, straightened a lamp, then came back past Godfrey, who was standing by the door. "And of course you've heard," he said, settling into Godfrey's easy chair, "about Greenberg's troupe."

"Even heavy explosives could not drive me to touring repertory," Godfrey started to say, as Winstead went on, "simply dreadful, such a loss, and Anderson's wife -"

"What loss? What have you heard?" Godfrey asked, one hand lightly on the sideboard to steady himself.

"Philip didn't tell you?" Winstead said. "They were killed." He had let up on the gossiping tone, thank all the saints.

"Anderson and Greenberg?" he asked. The news was making its chilling way through him.

"The entire show," Winstead said, "and the audience with them. A direct hit on the theater, in Bristol."

 _And I would have been with them_ , he thought. His heart started to soar with relief, but he held it back as unworthy. Anything more than gratitude for being spared would be an insult to the dead.

"This is terrible news," Godfrey said. "So many fine actors and friends."

"An awful loss, but it's almost a dream to die mid-soliloquy." Winstead had pulled out a snuffbox and looked more at home than ever.

"And never get to the applause? More like 'Tartar limbo, worse than hell'. What play was it?" His voice had always been able to rattle on.

"Something by Barrie. Not _Little Mary_ , the other one whose title sounds like that."

It was time, Godfrey thought, for Winstead to leave.

*

The next three nights she seemed more beautiful than ever. He was sure his feelings must be written in his every move, if anyone had been paying attention. But she was distracted, and no one else would have noticed. He spoke to her about trivialities, no reasonable way to tell her the difference she had made.

"How goest thy search, Viola?" She looked up at him with surprise – _what did she think he meant_? "You were looking for information regarding your cousin, weren’t you?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "It’s been dreadful trying to find things out for sure." She looked relieved; if only he could know what worried her - she said she wasn’t in trouble, but it seemed more as if she wasn’t sure yet what trouble she was in.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. "Whatever it is, my dear, you shall find a way." Again she seemed to react to more than the simple meaning of his words. She shivered, and his hand slipped away.

"Thank you," she said. "I suppose it must be difficult for the Germans to get accurate information, too." Her face brightened and England did feel a little safer. She reached out and squeezed his hand, then turned to go.

U

 **London—19 April 1941**

He had not been joking about the Barrie. He didn't joke about Barrie. She had saved him three times from Barrie, and that was a miracle itself.

 **London—Spring 1941**

It would do. No theatre had been completely spared from the privations; rationing affected more than meals. It had seats, it had a stage, it had most of a curtain. He had played in grander, he had played in worse, and that wasn't even counting the tube station. The curtain would do; a little oil in the works and it would raise and lower.

She was not his lady, and had never been. He was an attendant lord, had started a scene or two, but in the end this was her story. He was a curious old man, and he would like to know what she wasn't telling him, to meddle if he could – but that was not his role. He was not used to being offstage for the finale. Perhaps he could make a cameo in his bloomers.

The seats looked comfortable enough. He walked up the aisle to get a better look at the stage. He had played here in better days, Henry V, was it? And here the princess would sleep, oblivious while Hitler pranced around. It would be dreadful; what would they do for costumes? Perhaps the prince could enter from above, flying like Peter Pan. As she had descended the stairs to the shelter, not to wake them but to change the dream.

Was that a voice calling? He leaned on a seat to peer around and the blast was not a surprise, seemed like his fate had only been delayed, and he was suddenly on his back and something was keeping him from moving and there was pain.

 **London—14 September 1940**

The knock on the door. He looked up from the letter. Someone was pounding at the door, the unexpected visitor, Elijah turning up to find his place taken by another refugee. Or else – no, best not to think about that. The medium-sized child looked to her mother; the pounding went on and no one else stirred. They probably formed quite the tableau, but how long could silence hold? They would stay in this moment until the curtain fell. The vicar exchanged glances with those he knew best, and walked quickly to the door with small steps.

And on the other side, a girl, a lovely young woman, the light catching her face at an angle that made her look almost ecstatic. Her shoes were unpolished but unscuffed; she returned the second one to her foot as she came in. She looked around the shelter slowly and surely, as if taking in each of the people inside without worrying where she herself stood with them.

He was lost before she was halfway across the room; everything that made him fall more in love with her later also brought him back closer to himself.

 **  
 _Part 4, Polly_  
**

 **London—December 1940**

They didn't talk about the fourth time.

They had never planned to meet outside of air-raid shelters and tube stations; Polly wasn't sure if it was an unspoken rule, like the ones she had misunderstood her first night there. She knew that the contemps still had some notions about chaperones and propriety, but other than Mrs. Rickett's rules about visitors she hadn't seen them in effect. The war had changed a lot of things; that was why she had come, after all ( _before all_ ), wasn't it?

She hadn’t forgotten her research questions altogether, so she set out to document – how did each of her sheltermates spend their days? She saw Miss Laburnum and Mr. Dorming at Mrs. Rickett's, of course, but Mrs. Brightford and her girls went back to wherever they lived, and Polly rather pictured Mrs. Wyvern and the vicar perpetually working on the next holiday bazaar. Sir Godfrey was harder to decipher, beyond her vague notions of how a knighted actor might spend his days. She had wondered now and then where he lived; the houses near the shelter looked modest, but some of the rowhouses could hide posher flats.

So it caught her by surprise when she ran into him haggling over fruit near Oxford Street.

"Good lord, boy," he was saying, "I know there's 'small choice in rotten apples', but why on earth would you disguise the good ones beneath with a layer of bad on top?"

She smiled, and he turned directly around and exclaimed, "Viola! My cook has sent me out to fend for her pudding; apparently she has better business to attend to, and I must confess, she is such a bully and such an excellent cook that I dare not argue. Yet I despair," he moaned, sweeping his arm towards the fruit cart, "of finding anything worthy the name. It may be tinned meat for breakfast, dinner, and pudding if I fail. I suppose I must do my bit." He picked up another apple and looked dubiously at it.

"Hardly the temptation of Eve," she agreed. _Good lord, even his grocery shopping was charming; a dangerous man indeed._

"We will all make do," he sighed.

"Do you live near here?" she asked, surprised a bit at her boldness, and then surprised at her surprise - was she a blushing twentieth-century schoolgirl?

"It’s one of my favorite areas," he said, "so I visit." He hadn’t answered the question.

"Paying a call anywhere in particular?" she asked, and he seemed to consider.

"Are you busy, my lady?" If she didn’t know better, she’d have said he sounded shy.

"No, not really," she said, surprised to realize it was true for once.

"Come, take a walk with me." He gestured eastward with a flourish and started walking, and Polly followed as easily as if she were being led by the hand. He rounded corners quickly and strode calmly across streets, traffic or not, but she didn't find it difficult to keep up.

"How long have you been in London?" he asked.

"I just arrived in September," she said. He looked like he expected more, so she continued, trying to play it safe, "I'd visited my aunt before, but everything looks so different now."

"A traveler on a foreign shore, indeed," he said. "We are all disoriented some days, I believe." She nodded. "But you seem to know some neighborhoods quite well." He looked at her evaluatingly.

"A good memory for street names, but a poor one for directions," she said.

"I would show you a spot full of magic," he said, "not an isle but an islet amid the city." She tried to keep track of the turns they were making; it felt as though it would be important to learn. They walked several minutes and spoke little, Sir Godfrey pointing out the way to a bookseller here, a charming sparrow there, until he came to a stop on the pavement in front of a lovely row of mansions.

"One of the city's more harmonious little neighborhoods," he said. "Positively dull at times, but it has a secret or two, as we all do."

He was gathering himself up for something, and she did not interrupt. "Polly," he said - not Viola, not Lady Mary - "will you come with me?"

"Of course," she said.

"And if I were to lead you onto a boat across the seas, or off the peak of a mountain - you trust me well, and wisely, I flatter myself to think." He turned her to face the center of the square, where a small wrought-iron gate led through a hedge.

"And so I will trust you," he said, "for your honesty, and your beauty, but also because of the trust you give me, a foolish old man." They crossed the street and he opened the gate.

It was late fall, and nothing should have been blooming or green, but that didn't matter - a few steps inside and they were surrounded by ornately shaped hedges and tree branches shaped into intricate symbols, looking almost like spells and glyphs in some other language. The city was completely blocked out from sight and sound, and most of the sky was behind branches. Somehow it felt as secure as an air-raid shelter - and with thinking like that, she would be killed before the retrieval team ever found her, for heaven's sake.

"It's lovely," she said, turning around to take it all in. It wasn't all decorative; someone had taken up a fair patch for a victory garden, banked up for the winter but clearly someone’s careful project. Like so much of London, people doing their bit and changing where needed, while historic traditions stood side by side with war measures, St. Paul’s and the fire watch.

"There are many oases like it in this city," he said. "But this one was very special to someone I loved once." She almost asked if he had been married or widowed, but it seemed presumptuous even in this space. His eyes were sad, and she put her hand on his cheek for a moment - not too presumptuous after all.

"I was on my way here," he said simply, "and I thought you might like it."

"I can see how it would be very special," Polly said carefully. "Not just a hidden garden, but its own world inside."

He nodded. "It belongs to all the residents of the square, but I managed to sweet-talk a copy of the key from the daughter of one of the houses, and some days it feels like my very own."

"I'd imagine that wasn't hard." She felt herself grinning, then noticed another figure near them. "What statue is that?" but as she asked, she knew the answer.

"Prospero guards this land," Sir Godfrey said, "although the current storm can look to him neither for its cause nor for its cure."

"And his staff has already been broken," she said, looking more closely and running her gloved fingers across the rough stone.

"Yes, a vandal with an interest in Shakespearean literalism," he said.

She didn’t want to leave this spot, but Eileen would be waiting soon, hopefully with news to report, and she didn’t want to overstay her welcome - or rather, she did, but it was better not to push too far. "Thank you for bringing me here," she said. The sun was lower in the sky, and shone through the leaves at its new angle to bathe them in green light. "If only all shipwrecks were so pleasant."

He nodded. As they walked back to the gate, noises from outside began to break in, shouts and an engine. They rushed out together to find two boys fighting - almost Colin’s age, she thought - over a purse that most certainly did not belong to either of them. One of them was half astride a motorbike and trying to pull away; the exhaust backfired and Polly started. She stumbled towards the boys but caught herself; Sir Godfrey took her arm and put himself between her and the lads.

" _What_ is the meaning of this?" he started to shout, but the boy on the motorbike was pulling forward and oh god he was headed for Sir Godfrey, and before she could think about it Polly was leaping forward and pushing him into safety. They rolled together onto the pavement; he was stronger than she had realized, and his cologne was lighter than she had expected. They were both catching their breath.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes, I - oh, _curse_ them!" The boys were fleeing around the corner, and there was no way she could chase them in these shoes, not that she could even collect herself quickly enough, and -

"Don’t worry about them," he said. "You’re all right?"

"Yes," she said. "Are you?" She was running her hands over his arms, over his back, reassuring herself.

"A little bruised but fine," he said. "Better than those apples, at least." She laughed. He let go and started to stand up, groaning something about aches that would build character, then reaching out a hand to help her up.

She took it gladly - she wanted to laugh at herself for her shakiness, all over a motorbike, which she certainly knew from a bomb at this point. That was the thing, one could brave the big things with all of the British composure in the world, then be undone again by the little ones. Where the matter of the retrieval team stood in that - well, she would have to see on that one, how the story would end.

She was glad to find herself wrapped in his arms, and she leaned her forehead against his, both of them just breathing for a minute. She pulled back a few inches, and he started to speak just as she leaned forward to kiss him, and they both stopped and laughed.

He looked at her for several long seconds and seemed to decide against speaking, kissing her himself this time, and she let herself sink into the warmth and the fact that they were both alive in this moment right now. They leaned together for a longer moment, then Polly looked back to the park’s gate, which, simple and ajar for once, invited them to come sit for a few more minutes. She could take a few more minutes; it was wartime, and shopgirls and gentlemen could have friendships, couldn't they?

They went in, and the door did not swing shut behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, to Connie Willis for creating these lovely characters, and to TeaRoses for requesting it so I could spend more time with them! Historical errors are my own, differences from the book in timeline or details I'll blame on time travel.


End file.
